Brooke Patel

About

The thing this work has shown me over and over is that people are far more frightened of doing it wrong than of the sadness itself. They arrive asking whether they are taking too long, feeling too little, or feeling too much at the wrong moments. There is no correct performance. Mourning is not a tidy sequence of stages you pass through and complete; it moves in circles and ambushes you in supermarkets. It can sit quietly for months and then return at full volume. Understanding that alone takes a surprising amount of weight off. We spend our time on what is actually happening to you rather than on what you assume is supposed to be happening. My practice was built slowly, almost entirely through people who mentioned it to someone else afterwards. That suits this work, which depends on trust far more than on advertising. If you have been quietly measuring yourself against some imagined standard, come and put it down.